ABSTRACT
As interest grew in the concept of physiotherapy self-referral schemes, other physiotherapy services started to emerge throughout the UK. Many called themselves ‘direct access’ services, but, on closer examination, these proved to be very different indeed in terms of how patients actually accessed them. The authors found examples of direct access services which had introduced a system that allowed patients to refer themselves, but only after being suggested they do so by another healthcare practitioner. Although offering advantages for both patients and referrers, these services are not examples of ‘true’ self-referral. So, the physiotherapists took the decision to use a different name, to make patients and their decision-making clearly as the focus and from that time we have referred to these services simply as ‘patient self-referral services’. They found using this title removed ambiguity and distinguishes these services from the variety of other options available.
